Page 51 of Our Last Resort

Words like spit on the mother’s face.

A punishment that had been meant for me.

The mother shifted. Our eyes met.

I stood, legs bare in the evening breeze. A blizzard in my rib cage, ice caps melting in my brain. That’s how I felt: a natural disaster of a girl.

Émile followed the mother’s gaze. It landed on me, on us. Girls in nightgowns, hair down, the skin on our faces still shimmering with sink water.

My face burned as Émile’s eyes met mine.

He squinted, then straightened his back. Nothing to apologize for. This was a complex situation, and we were just girls.

The next day, the mother showed up at breakfast. She kept her head bowed above her tray, brought spoons of gruel to her dry lips. Only when she went to collect the other mothers’ bowls did I see them: bright-purple blotches on her arm, where Émile had gripped.

In the foggy light of the morning, her skin was thin and wrinkled, like tissue paper after it’s been balled up. Her right eye was partly obscured by a puffy eyelid. There was an angry, bloated red stain underneath her eyebrow.

Émile didn’t ask for our silence. He never, ever needed to.

Whatever we had seen, we didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t even want to think of it.

17Escalante, Utah

The Sixth Day

There is no world in which I allow Gabriel to speak to Harris without my supervision.

I walk around our suite to the edge of our private patio.

If our sliding door were cracked open, I’d be able to hear Gabriel and Harris’s conversation from here, but it’s closed. Of course it is. I’m the one who locked it last night. Who checked, checked, and checked again.

I even pulled the thick blackout curtains behind me, tugged them all the way shut.

Which means that as long as the curtains remain in this position, these two can’t see me, and I can’t see them. But I canhearif I get close.

I give Gabriel and Harris a minute.

The curtains don’t move.

I tiptoe onto the patio. Walk up to the sliding door, press my palms against the glass. Slowly, I lean forward, turn my head to the side, and bring my ear to the panel.

There it is. Gabriel’s voice, muffled but unmistakable.

“What can I do for you, Deputy?”

“Can you tell me where you were two nights ago?”

The deputy’s tone, as best as I can make it out through the glass door, is casual, almost breezy.

“Here,” Gabriel says. “In this hotel.”

Harris asks Gabriel who he was with. Gabriel names me. He doesn’t say “my sister” or “my friend.” Just my name: “Frida Nilsen.”

Smart man. Sticking to the question. Maybe he can handle this, after all.

“And what did you do that night?”

“Well,” Gabriel tells him, “we went to dinner, and then we went to bed.”

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